


what bitter thing is this?

by the_crownless_queen



Series: Sapphic September 2019 [19]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/F, Sapphic September, Sapphic September 2019, Seer!Rowena, Visions of death, past and future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25144309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_crownless_queen/pseuds/the_crownless_queen
Summary: "It's okay, it was just a dream," Helga mutters, but no, not it is not okay. It wasn't just a dream.Or, Rowena has prophetic visions nobody ever believes her about.
Relationships: Godric Gryffindor/Salazar Slytherin, Helga Hufflepuff/Rowena Ravenclaw, Rowena Ravenclaw & Salazar Slytherin
Series: Sapphic September 2019 [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1473389
Kudos: 26





	what bitter thing is this?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sapphic September, Day 28 - Nightmare. Title is from Cassandra, by HD.
> 
> I don’t actually know where this came from, but it’s angsty.

Rowena jerks awake with a gasp, her hands so tight around the sheets her knuckles bleed bone-white. She heaves like she’s drowning, choking on sobs, and Helga jerks awake as well, pulling her close until Rowena can match her own breathing, dragging away the last remnants of her nightmarish vision.

"It's okay, it was just a dream," she mutters into Rowena’s raven-black hair, caressing the silky strands with a shaking hand.

Rowena’s fists tighten around Helga’s nightgown and she shakes her head, sobbing tearlessly.

“It wasn’t, it wasn’t,” she mumbles, and she’s incoherent and she doesn’t care, because what she saw was horrifying — but worse than that, now it will come true.

Her nightmares always do.

* * *

In the first dream she remembers, Rowena is young. A child, barely aware of the magic her body houses, and she is wandering the fields behind her father’s house, idly picking flowers for her mother.

Her mother likes the blue ones best, though, and Rowena has to wander further and further away to find them, until she doesn’t recognize the field anymore.

She can’t see her parents’ house anymore, but she can see a village.

She doesn’t mean to go there, but her feet aim in that direction, and suddenly, Rowena’s standing in the center of the village, amidst a large, shouting crowd.

It is a dream, she realizes, but the thought feels like swimming through honey — slow and thick.

The crowd parts before her as she steps forward, until Rowena can finally see what they are gathered here for, and…

It’s 

a

_ girl. _

She’s tied to a pyre, her mouth gagged with a dirty-looking scrap of fabric, and her golden-brown cheeks are stained with tears and made dark with soot as she struggles against her binds.

The pyre is already smoking.

The girl can’t be much older than Rowena herself.

She screams as the pyre burns, and the air fills with the smell of cooked meat and burning wood.

Rowena can’t turn away until she can, suddenly — her eyes catch on a boy, his skin as dark as the girl’s had been. He’s standing a way away from the shrieking crowd, and his fists are shaking. His mouth is contorted into a silent scream, and every line of his face, riveted to the pyre, speaks of devastation.

The fire goes out with a loud  _ whoosh _ as the boy suddenly rushes forward, but it’s too late for the girl.

Rowena doesn’t see what happens to the boy next, but when she wakes up, heaving and sobbing, his dark forest green eyes stay with her.

It takes her days before she’s able to stomach the smell of meat again.

It will take her years before she meets the boy again — not in her dreams, this time — and longer still before she realizes just who Salazar had lost that day. What scared Muggles had cost him.

It will be, of course, too late by then to change anything.

* * *

“Will you tell me what you saw?”

Rowena shifts in their bed, willing her racing heart to slow down. Outside, the sun must be rising, because the first rays of sunlight start to trickle in through the wood paneling of their window.

It’s easier, knowing the night is ending, to push away the remnants of her horrible dream.

“I don’t want to burden you,” she says softly, turning back to Helga. She shuffles closer, pressing her face to Helga’s neck, breathing in the smell of her and the  _ life _ of her.

(She lives still, and will until she doesn’t — but by then, Rowena won’t be there anymore.

She’s seen that, too.)

"I want it," Helga replies, her voice soothing and steady. “I want to. You shouldn’t carry your burdens alone.”

Unbidden, Rowena’s lips quirk up into a fond smile against Helga’s skin, and she presses a light kiss there. “I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” Helga replies, easy and natural. “Now, tell me what bothers you.” Her eyes soften. “Please, let me help you."

“I…” Rowena swallows, her eyes stinging. She hesitates — nothing has ever come out of sharing her visions. Nothing.

But it’s Helga, and Rowena loves her, and there is nothing she wouldn’t do for her.

So she tells her the truth. “I saw Salazar leave us,” she says, and presses her eyes shut, hoping the gods will forgive her for this.

Hoping  _ he _ will — and knowing he won’t.

Helga draws her into her arms, pulling their bodies close, and hugs her to her chest. “It’s going to be okay,” she says, her voice kind and soft. “You know him. You know he wouldn’t just leave — not without a good reason. And even if he did, he’d come back. You know he would.”

Rowena thinks about the boy she’d seen, all those years ago — how he’d looked, screaming and agonized, and how nobody had helped him.

She thinks about the man she knows now, with shadows in his eyes but always a quick smile — especially when Godric is around to entertain. He helped her build the enchantment for the stairs in their school just last month, and he’d laughed when she’d suggested they make them move on their own — and then helped her make sure they wouldn’t just drop a student on the way.

And she thinks about the man she’d seen just now. How the darkness that had been lurking underneath the joy no longer simmered beneath the surface but instead shone proudly, a dark light swallowing everything else.

How that man had tossed spell after spell at Godric, hatred distorting his face, and how no regret had shown on his face when Godric had fallen, face ashen-white as blood spilled from his veins too quickly to be stopped.

“Yes,” she hears herself say, blinking past the awful images. Her smile would look awful, should anyone be able to see it. “You’re right. He would come back, if he left.”

He will.

But Rowena is too much of a coward to ruin it — to tell Helga everything.

To try to convince her that her visions are true.

But Rowena’s been down this road before — with her parents, with her friends, and with previous lovers too.

Nobody has ever believed her even as much as Helga has; but Helga only thinks Rowena’s nightmares are just that — nightmares. Awful ones, maybe, but dreams nonetheless.

“I’m always right,” Helga replies, a grin in her voice. "And that is why you should listen to me."

Rowena laughs wetly. “I’ll try to remember that.”

Helga presses a kiss to the top of her head, humming. “See that you do.” She hugs Rowena tighter for a few moments, before letting out a sigh and asking, “Are you feeling better?”

Rowena blinks and thinks about it for a few seconds. “I… Yes,” she finally answers, and she’s almost surprised to find that it’s not a lie.

Almost, but not quite, because this is Helga.

No matter how dark the future may be, and how helpless Rowena may be to do anything but witness it twice, in the present, she has Helga.

And the perfection of having Helga — gorgeous, kind, lovely Helga — in her life is worth all the pain the world might rain down upon them.

_ “You don’t know how happy you make me.” _ The words linger on the tip of her tongue, so very true Rowena’s heart aches with it, but she swallows them back.

“I love you,” she repeats instead, and hopes it carries everything she wants to say.


End file.
